As described in patent application BR 10 2013 004382-6, of the same assignee, improvements in energy efficiency, handling, and reduction in the emission of pollutants may be achieved by means of a thermal management system for the feeding of fuel in an internal combustion engine, which is able to maintain the fuel at a temperature more adequate to the combustion upon its feeding to the engine. The thermal management system includes a heat exchanger which uses, as a heat source, the thermal energy dissipated by the engine itself, without the need for generating extra energy.
One of the means for dissipating the thermal energy is defined by the vehicle radiator, which comprises a heat exchanger to cool the engine, preventing the latter from overheating by exchanging heat from the engine and its components to the environment, by means of the vehicle radiator and using water as the intermediate fluid.
However, the heat transferred from the engine to the radiator water represents an energy which is lost and even undesired, since if this heat remains stored in the water, it loses efficiency as a thermal exchanging fluid.
The cooler the radiator water, the more heat it will be able to absorb from the engine in a smaller amount of time.
Another known means for dissipating thermal energy from the engine is the lubricant oil itself which, besides lubricating moving parts of the engine, allows the heat generated by the latter to be carried outside from the engine and dissipated into the environment. Some engine parts, such as the crankshaft, bearings, camshaft, rods and pistons, may have their cooling entirely done by the lubricant oil of the engine. When overheated, the oil loses viscosity and may deteriorate, and consequently loses the desired lubricant properties and the capacity of cooling internal parts of the engine, impairing the correct operation of engine components, leading to major damages to the engine or even to the total loss of the vehicle engine.
Some vehicles, particularly heavy vehicles, are provided with an oil radiator, which takes the form of a heat exchanger, usually of the plate type, provided between the engine block and the required oil filter, usually downstream the latter, or even incorporated in a single block with the oil filter, as usually is the case in heavy vehicles, in order to function as a heat exchange enhancer between the lubricant oil and the radiator water. However, the oil radiators presently in use do not exchange heat between the oil and the fuel.
Thus, as mentioned in said prior patent BR 10 2013 004382-6, in low temperature environments in which the fuel has the temperature thereof reduced to values at a distant low from the flash point temperature (“cold fuel”), there is an increased or reduced difficulty in burning the fuel fed to the engine, said difficulty being greater when using fuels containing a high flash point. It should be further observed that the typical pressure inside a fuel distributor in 1.0 L vehicles of indirect injection is around 4.2 bar. In such condition, the vaporization temperature of the fuel is greater than the vaporization temperature under atmospheric pressure. For vehicles provided with direct fuel injection such values (pressure and vaporization temperature) are even higher. It is also known that the increase in fuel temperature makes easier to obtain a spray of micrometric droplets, which will burn more easily when in contact with the spark from the ignition coil or when compressed to a certain pressure (diesel).
Although the thermal exchange between the heat dissipated by the operating engine and the fuel is sufficient for, in principle, suitably heating a somewhat “cold” fuel, this is not a working condition that presents an optimized thermo-energetic efficiency, allowing engine failures, jolts, slow acceleration response and even high emission of pollutants due to poor fuel burning.
In “flex vehicles” (fueled by ethanol and/or gasoline in any mixture proportion) it is known that the engine yield is not optimized. An effective fuel heating system may provide optimized conditions by taking the fuel (for example, ethanol or gasoline) to better burning conditions (by heating the fuel to temperatures closer to its vaporization point) and a consequent better yield of the engine.
Due to the facts mentioned above, in the prior patent application BR 10 2013 004382-6 it was proposed a managed system for fuel heating, in order to be maintained operating during the entire engine running time, in order to achieve high performance (energetic optimization) of the engine, better vehicle handling with fast response upon acting on the acceleration pedal, with optimized torque and power and lower pollutant emissions, not only in “flex” type vehicles (two or three fuels), but also in vehicles provided with an internal combustion engine operating with a single fuel, either liquid or gas.
One of the solutions proposed in said prior patent application, specifically the one illustrated in FIG. 3, comprises a management system for the feeding of fuel which is able to absorb, by means of a common heat exchanger, the desired thermal energy both from the cooling water flow and from the engine lubricating oil. However, said prior patent application does not limit the invention to one type of heat exchanger which may be applied to the thermal management system, in order to use, when necessary, the heat dissipated by the flows of cooling water and lubricant oil heated inside the engine and carried to the respective water and oil radiators.